In his address to the nation on September 21, on the eve of next-generation GST reforms rollout, Prime Minister Narendra Modi exhorted citizens to take pride in purchasing and using Swadeshi products. In defining Swadeshi, however, he discarded the country of incorporation (of the company) principle and emphasised the country of manufacture (of the products).

Under this definition, whatever has been manufactured on Indian soil, and involving Indian labour, should be deemed as Swadeshi. Thus, Samsung handsets manufactured in Noida, Uttar Pradesh — “world’s largest mobile factory"— would be considered Indian rather than South Korean. Toyota cars rolling out of Bidadi, Karnataka factory would be considered Indian rather than Japanese. People sipping Brooke Bond Red Label tea in the morning, or enjoying fine quality books published by Penguin Random House India, need not suffer any scruples of patriotism either!

His government having boasted of attracting record FDI inflows under the “Make in India" flagship programme, the Prime Minister could not have acted otherwise. The RSS-affiliated Swadeshi Jagran Manch has for long campaigned against foreign companies in India. They have been bringing out pamphlets and booklets advising people to shun shampoo, oil, tea, and computers/laptops manufactured by foreign-owned companies, even if those were produced in India. They see the Multi-National Companies (MNCs) as a threat to India’s economic sovereignty comparable to the East India Company in the colonial period. Though Prime Minister Narendra Modi, like his predecessor Atal Bihari Vajpayee, has an RSS background, he, like Vajpayee, has espoused the trend of economic liberalisation with greater vigour than the Congress who initiated it.

The new definition of Swadeshi is at least 25 years old. The BJP-led NDA’s election manifesto for the 13th Lok Sabha elections, 1999, tried to contextualise Swadeshi in the environment of economic liberalisation. “Swadeshi is not", it read, “reinventing the wheel. We will facilitate the domestic industry to gain enough muscles to compete with the multinationals in the local and global markets. We want domestic companies to flourish and acquire a Trans-National status. At the same time, the country cannot do without FDI because besides capital stock, it brings with it technology, new market practices, and most importantly, employment" (For a Proud and Prosperous India: An Agenda).

The election manifesto (1999) wanted to relegate poverty like “slavery, colonialism, smallpox, and........

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